


Reference Room

by Melynda Jensen (edwardsmom)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:04:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7080202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edwardsmom/pseuds/Melynda%20Jensen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scully and Skinner investigate a haunted campus library.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reference Room

**Author's Note:**

> I had several stories archived at the Sisters-in-Smut Skinnerotica website, which is no more. (Actually, it might live on at LiveJournal, but you need an account and permission to access it, and I don’t believe in that.) Since I’m fond of these stories I’m posting them here. 
> 
> _Many thanks to Red Valerian for her suggestions on an earlier draft. Anyone who recognizes a certain reference room in South Hadley, MA — you’re right! And a debt of gratitude to John Keats, who wrote “The Eve of St. Agnes” and which must have been in my subconscious when I was writing this (thanks, Red, for pointing that out!)._
> 
> ETA: I just thought to check [The Gossamer Project](http://www.gossamer.org/), the XF fanfic archive, and to my great surprise it still exists, my XF fanfic is still on there (under the name Melynda Jensen) and it was updated as recently as last year! Whoo-hoo for XF fandom! I’m still putting the stories here, though.

Federal Agents Skinner and Scully picked their way carefully across the icy expanse of the empty Quad, their breath curling in front of them as they walked. They’d just made their report to the Provost’s Office, which had been satisfied with their findings (the President, apparently, had taken advantage of the first day of winter break and hightailed it to more clement climes), and now the agents had one last duty before they left — set the alarm and lock the door of the not-so-haunted campus library.

Skinner had volunteered to do it, actually — it seemed only fitting. When Mulder had sensed a connection between the reports of ghost sightings at a small New England campus library and those at a library near the ocean in California, of course he had pulled the California assignment and left on the next flight out. That left Scully — she had spent a semester at this campus for a medical anthropology seminar — and Skinner, who had been assigned for no discernible reason he could see except that he supervised the investigation of the X-Files, and knew how to put on tire chains. He’d spent two long, arduous days slogging through snow and ice from dormitory to faculty office to administrative building so he and Scully could interview witnesses, determined to do his job but feeling more than a little foolish the whole time. Playing custodian seemed the perfect way to end the whole case. 

Scully was silent as she walked beside him, trying to keep warm by energetically pursing all the reasons why she would kill Mulder when she got back. How dare he angle for the California assignment and not ask for her? Being on a campus for one semester almost ten years ago didn’t make her an expert here. She hated the perpetually gray sky with no hint of sun, she hated the black ice that threatened to dump her on her ass every other step, she hated working on a case that made her feel like an idiot — and if anything could make her feel more like an idiot than listening to people describe the presence of ghostly lovers who had reputedly run off together on a winter’s night years ago and now couldn’t seem to leave the campus library alone, she didn’t know what it was. 

And she knew that Skinner was no happier than she was about being here. In fact, the only real question was whether she could kill Mulder before Skinner got to him. She smiled a little at the thought. She’d never really thought of the AD as a kindred soul, but they’d found themselves in perfect accord about their investigation. They’d catch each other’s eye sometimes, and know — they were taking it as seriously as they could, grimly humorless, asking the hard-hitting questions, but a part of them was standing to the side, shaking their heads at the whole thing. 

Her ire rose again at the thought. Mulder had wasted their time here. It was all his fault. And he was probably surfing somewhere in the Pacific at that very moment while her face felt like it was going to freeze right off.

When they finally reached the library entrance, Scully pulled on the handle but the door stuck. Skinner stepped up behind her, ready to add his muscle to hers, but Scully’s next angry pull made the door swing open abruptly, causing her to stumble back into Skinner and him to grab at her shoulders in reflex. And then they stood still, transfixed.

It might have been the radiators, which were on full-blast. The heat met them like a palpable wave, so overwhelming it almost immediately seemed to melt the tension in their bodies and take away any power of thought. Mulder, the futility of the case, all of it was suddenly forgotten. 

It might have been the sight of the winter sun finally making an appearance and bouncing light off sparse clouds and streaming through stained glass windows set high in the library’s walls, transforming the wood of vaulted ceilings, of tables and chairs and study carrels, of the polished floor — reds and purples sketching warm, inviting contours; yellows and whites obscuring, reflecting prism-like; greens and blues restoring the texture and depth of the forest.

And it might have been something else.

“I forgot how beautiful this could be,” Scully breathed softly.

With her spoken words, she remembered where she was, who she was pressed up against, and he seemed to as well as he released his grip on her. But instead of simply keying the alarm system and leaving, he ushered her inside and closed the door against the cold, drawn by the play of light after the stark white and gray outside. Scully, just as captivated, moved slowly into the reference room, and Skinner followed close behind, taking off his heavy jacket.

It was the first time they’d been alone in the library together, and the first time the sun had shone since they’d arrived. The library not only looked different, it _felt_ different — and so did the two agents.

Scully took off her parka and found herself telling Skinner, “I did a lot of my studying in here. It was a nice change from the labs.” She turned and looked at him, a shy smile on her face. “This was ‘my corner,’” she said, running a hand lightly along the wooden surface of a table made strange by the colored light, it seemed to pulse and glow at her touch. “Right by a radiator and the _Index Medicus_.”

The smile made her look suddenly younger, and Skinner watched as she tugged her wool sweater off over her head, her back arching as she did so, unselfconsciously graceful in simple movement. She must have undressed this way dozens of times when she’d been a medical student, he realized, seeing her in his mind’s eye hurrying in after class and hiding from a New England winter by basking in the warmth from the radiator, her books and notes spread out in front of her. 

The sight of her in well-fitting jeans and a turtleneck that fit snugly along her curves, her slender fingers combing briefly through her bright red hair to smooth it down, the small dreamy smile on her face, the sudden remembered feel of her shoulders in his hands — it should have been enough to make him turn away. But he couldn’t, the heat and something else had seeped into his bones and he couldn’t feel tense at all, he felt utterly calm, relaxed. And why _should_ he turn away? She was an incredibly lovely woman. Why shouldn’t he appreciate that? 

She bent, untying her hiking boots, and then looked up at him. Multicolored light reflected in her blue eyes, and he realized she’d been transformed somehow, that none of the rules applied here. She was a student again, and he was along for the ride.

As she toed off her boots he removed his glasses, setting them carefully on a shelf, and took off his own sweater and the flannel shirt underneath, leaving him in a long-sleeved thermal shirt. She noted, “You could wander around here in a t-shirt and not get any goosebumps, they keep it so warm in the winter.” 

He took off his boots. “Is that what people do?” he asked, moving closer so he could keep her face in focus. “Is that why you like it here?”

Again the shy smile. “It feels…real here.” She leaned back against the table, arms crossed, looking up at him. It wasn’t the body language of agent to supervisor. And it felt perfectly natural to sit on the table beside her. 

At a lifted eyebrow from him, she explained, “The lab’s so modern, impersonal, you don’t really feel connected to anything, once you walk in you could be — anywhere, any lab in the world, but here…time stands still. The walls, the windows, every shelf and table has been here from the very beginning.”

_Time stands still_. Was that what was happening here? Could those stories about the ghosts actually be — 

“Do you feel it?” she suddenly asked in a low, intent voice. “There’s _history_ here. Years and years of people — ” She took his hand, pressed it to the table. “Feel that. Those smooth indentations, worn down by books, by the hands and elbows of people reading, studying…” 

Skinner ran his hand across the wooden surface. The table was warm, warm as the hand holding his. Sunlight tinged red and blue by the windows turned the hard table into something ready to yield, to mold to something other than those years of books and hands and elbows. 

Scully looked into his dark eyes, trying to find the answer to why she was telling him these things, why she’d taken his hand in hers. What she saw there was warm, incredibly compelling, something she could drown in utterly. “Do you feel it?” she whispered as he touched her soft red hair.

“Yes,” he answered, and started to undress her. Just as the heat intensified the smell of the wood of the table, the floor, even of the pages of the books on the shelves, it intensified the smell of her desire as each piece of her clothing fell to the floor and her scent rose from her body.

She was so warm her nipples weren’t hard, so relaxed she murmured not a word as he helped her on top of the table and laid her back. He found himself surrounded by the heady, musky essence of her as he parted her legs and stroked lightly, brushing, tracing. Then he knelt on the floor at the edge of the table, tasting the salt of her sweat on her inner thighs with his tongue. Her mouth opened, and she tasted the warm wetness of anticipation, of languorous pleasure, of winter sunlight as he finally cupped her buttocks in his hands and lifted her to his lips. 

He bestowed light kisses all around her sex, enjoying her slowly, thoroughly, his kisses gradually pressing harder, his tongue caressing more purposefully, until he finally nuzzled nose and mouth and chin deep into her vulva as if her were drinking her, his tongue insisting on her response as it alternately delved into her vagina and flicked her erect clitoris with sharp stabs of pleasure.

She cried out, arching her back as if it were one of the vaults in the ceiling, her hands clutching the sides of the table, feeling the sturdiness, the thickness, the solidity of the wood she pressed her buttocks and shoulders and head against, then roving over her body restlessly until they pressed against the back of his head, encouraging him, begging him. 

After long, long moments he lifted his head and declared, “You taste like heaven. Damn, I could eat you forever.”

“Get up here and let me taste _you_ ,” she demanded, breathless. 

“You’ll have to taste yourself first,” he said and, joining her on the table top, bent down to kiss her, welcoming her tongue in his mouth, caressing him, probing him. Nothing needed to be hurried. Their first kiss went on and on as her hands slid under his shirt and pushed it up, undid his belt and slipped inside his jeans, and their hands explored each other’s bodies as if to remember every detail they encountered.

“You certainly know how to take someone’s breath away,” she murmured as she pushed his jeans and briefs off his hips and paused in the motion to caress the damp curve of his ass.

He helped her undress him and encouraged her hands to the front of his body, smiling when he heard a sound deep in her throat as she fondled his fully erect penis.

“See what you’ve done to me?” he asked, moving lower so he could taste her breasts.

His movement pulled him out of her hands. “Don’t you take that away from me, Walter!” 

He almost laughed at her mock-threat, and then realized what she’d called him. They really were outside of time here. He breathed her name, liking the sound, and then, “This is more important,” he insisted, closing his eyes and letting his mouth find its way around her chest. He played in the cleft between her breasts, nuzzling, laving, then he turned his face and caught one of her velvety nipples in his mouth. He took his time and savored its softness, its texture, its taste before he slowly aroused it to erectness. Then he turned his attention to her other nipple, repeating the prolonged process until he felt her writhe against him, her hands grasping his shoulders as her breath quickened.

“Walter?” she gasped.

“Mm?”

“ _Why_ won’t you let me do anything?”

He looked up at her, saw what he could only describe as equal parts arousal and frustration, and then did laugh. “Am I torturing you, Dana?”

She took his face firmly in her hands, but her first instinct to strangle him was almost immediately replaced by the effect his smile had on her. He looked so relaxed, like he was truly enjoying himself, and she relented and kissed him thoroughly instead.

Then she changed her grip on him and moved them both until he was sitting up under her and she was straddling his hips, ready to receive him.

Their hands met on his penis, positioning it as she lowered herself onto him slowly.

“Oh, god — you feel so hot,” he groaned as her flesh enveloped him. “It’s like you’re on fire...”

She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight. He buried his face in her chest, inhaling her, listening to her heart pound out the beat of her desire.

“Don’t move yet,” she whispered, “I’m so full with you — ”

“Am I hurting you?” he asked.

“No,” she exhaled. “It’s good. It’s very...very good...” She squeezed him from inside and they both gasped.

“ _Don’t move_??” he whispered desperately.

She tried to explain. “I need to get used to...you’re larger than anyone — ” She began to rock back and forth in his lap, shooting fire through his body. His hands glided down, caressing the delicate curve of her back, massaging her ass, then moved between them, circling her clitoris. “Walter,” she gasped, “don’t you want to come together?”

“I’m going to come whether you move or not, I’m so close — ”

Even as she felt her orgasm beginning he erupted inside her, lifting his hips up to press even deeper into her, holding her still, holding her close.

She stiffened and shuddered as she came, and then she started to rise and fall against him, refusing to let him withdraw, ready now to make love to him.

He was still savoring his first orgasm as her movements slowly penetrated his senses. “Dana...”

“Relax; I’ll do all the work.”

“Welcome to it,” he mumbled, then felt his face turned up and her lips caressing his open. Her tongue darted inside his mouth with the same rhythm as her hips moving against his. He thrust his fingers through her hair, holding on to her for dear life as she relentlessly brought him back to full hardness and demanded that he come again.

“I take it — you’re used to me — now,” he gasped between kisses.

“Shh,” she said in his ear before her tongue snaked out and described a hot, wet trail along it, and her breath made him shiver. “I’ve got you...let go,” she whispered, her voice almost hypnotic. “I’m right here...it’s okay, I’ve got you...”

He grasped at her body, eagerly feeling her hot, damp flesh, tracing her soft curves as she thrust herself onto him, withdrew, thrust again and grabbed him from within. He felt helpless, unable to control his movements as his mouth sought hers, then caressed her throat, bit at her shoulder, moved lower to suckle blindly at her breast — 

“...let go, Walter...”

He tried to concentrate on what he was doing but he couldn’t think, he could only feel as her hands kneaded his shoulders, using him for leverage as she moved faster.

“...I’ve got you...”

With a cry he realized he was coming again and planted his hands firmly on her hips, moving her along the length of him even faster. Her hands slid over his shoulders and down his back, feeling his muscles working, the slickness of his skin, the heat radiating from him.

Her thighs trembled and she collapsed against him as her orgasm hit her, scant seconds after he’d thrust into her one last time and subsided. She wrapped her legs around him, embracing him with her whole body, cradling his head against her chest.

He fought for breath, suddenly feeling the full impact of the heat in the room. “I am too _old_ for this!” he gasped.

“Never.” She gazed down at him fondly, caressing the sweat from his face.

He looked up and lost himself in her blue eyes. In defense he shifted his gaze and took in all of her and saw that the colored sunlight streaming in the windows threw each curve of her into high relief and transformed her. She was more beautiful than anything in the world had a right to be. 

He brought her face down to his. Long, deep kisses gradually became less fervent, until their lips were touching lightly, gently, briefly.

And then she actually giggled. He smiled at the sound, his eyes asking a question.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said, and there was pure mischief in her eyes. “It was one of my fantasies when I’d be sitting here studying, to have sex on this table while everywhere around me people were studying, minding their own business.”

“You mean you were haunted by those ghostly lovers before?” he asked. “Why didn’t you do anything about it?”

“Kind of hard on a women-only campus.”

He nodded sagely. And then, with mischief of his own in his dark eyes, he asked, “Any other fantasies I can help you make come true?”

She considered. “Well, there’s this reading corner by the fiche machines…”

**_FIN_ **


End file.
